Activist targeting U.S. schools, backed by big bucks

Rhee and her team are "education innovators dedicated to improving student achievement in a transformational way," said Meredith Johnson, a spokeswoman for the Arnold Foundation.

In New Jersey, the state affiliate of StudentsFirst can count on nearly unlimited support from hedge-fund managers David Tepper and Alan Fournier, the executive director said. Tepper and Fournier are also substantial donors to the PAC backing Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Both men declined to comment.

"There is no budget," said the state director, Derrell Bradford. "They are willing to spend whatever it takes."

On a smaller scale, Charter Schools USA, one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies in the nation, gave Rhee's group $5,000 last year after honoring her as a "New American Hero," a spokeswoman for the outfit said.

And StudentsFirst has received more than $1 million in small contributions of less than $100 each from parents and other grassroots supporters, the staff said.

While Rhee is not required to disclose her spending, Reuters tracked more than $2 million in advocacy expenditures over the past nine months alone. Among the line items: $790,000 on advertising and lobbying in Connecticut; $6,700 to wine and dine lawmakers in Missouri; and $120,000 in donations to candidates and political caucuses in Tennessee.

In Michigan, StudentsFirst spent $955,000 last fall to push an education package that included evaluating teachers primarily by student test scores and restricting union bargaining rights (so issues like the new evaluation system would not be subject to negotiation). Rhee's top ally in that campaign was State Representative Paul Scott, a social and fiscal conservative seen as a rising star in the Republican party.

Furious, the teachers' union organized and funded a drive to recall Scott. Wealthy business and evangelical interests and StudentsFirst fought back in a failed bid to keep him in office. Rhee's group alone spent at least $210,000 on that campaign, state records show.

UNLIKELY CRUSADER

A 42-year-old mother of two, Rhee seems an unlikely leader of the crusade to overhaul public education in America.

She spent just three years as a teacher, in Baltimore in the 1990s, and then founded a nonprofit to recruit top teachers to urban schools. A decade later she was tapped by Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty to run its schools.

As chancellor, Rhee caused an immediate furor by closing two dozen schools, firing hundreds of teachers and principals, and putting a laser focus on standardized test scores. The scores rose, but officials are now investigating allegations that some of the most dramatic gains may have come from cheating. At first, Rhee called the allegations an insult; later she said she supported an investigation.

Rhee resigned in the fall of 2010 after Fenty was voted out of office, in large part because the teachers unions were so angry with Rhee that they worked feverishly to defeat him.

Rhee now splits her time between Nashville, Tennessee, where her daughters attend public school, and Sacramento, California, where her new husband, former NBA star Kevin Johnson, is the mayor.

She also spends plenty of time on the road. In the past year she has given 150 speeches in venues from Wall Street to charter schools. Her contract for a speech at Kent State University last fall called for a $35,000 fee paid to Rhee Enterprises LLC. Her staff says she also makes many speeches for free.

"She has brought a celebrity status to the movement," said Kevin Chavous, a former city councilman in Washington, D.C.

Rhee's allies in the reform movement don't object to her ambition, but some worry that if cheating is proved in the capital, she will be discredited - and the entire reform movement along with her.

Rhee has also stirred concern among education activists with her links to conservative, anti-union Republicans - notably governors Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, and Mitch Daniels of Indiana. Democrats who have been working on their own to advance many of Rhee's ideas complain that they're finding it harder to win over members of their party because Rhee has made the entire reform platform look like a far-right agenda.

Last fall, for instance, Rhee made two appearances in Pennsylvania at events organized by a conservative PAC that supports a free-market approach to education, in which every family, no matter how wealthy, would receive a tax-funded voucher to pay tuition at private or parochial schools.

The Pennsylvania PAC shares the name "Students First" with Rhea's group but is not affiliated with her organization.

The Pennsylvania PAC has received millions from a trio of hedge-fund managers and the American Federation for Children, a pro-voucher group funded by Betsy and Dick DeVos, who are among the nation's biggest donors to Republican and evangelical causes.